GoSetaPhire

April Is National Poetry Month  

Afro-American Fragment

So long,

So far away

Is Africa.

Not even memories alive

Save those that history books create,

Save those that songs

Beat back into the blood--

Beat out of blood with words sad-sung

In strange un-Negro tongue--

So long,

So far away

Is Africa.

Subdued and time-lost

Are the drums—and yet

Through some vast mist of race

There comes this song

I do not understand

This song of atavistic land,

Of bitter yearning lost

Without a place--

So long,

So far away

Is Africa's

Dark face.